Advancing the global understanding and implementation of vision and imaging technologies

It was not that long ago when LED lights took the world of consumer illumination by storm. Now, with their great efficiency and growing versatility, they are becoming just as popular in advanced robotics. Many of today’s cutting-edge machine vision systems rely on LEDs.

Virtual reality has gotten a lot of attention in the popular press thanks to the advent of the Oculus Rift system. So far, the Oculus Rift stands alone as the most advanced virtual reality system to be commercialized for the mass market gaming industry. As impressive as it is, however, the Oculus Rift is only one part of a massive emergence of virtual reality technology. VR might find its way into entertainment the soonest, but it will ultimately make a huge impact in a wide range of settings.

In 2005, National Geographic estimated that about 50% of Earth’s surface was being used for agriculture. Ten years later, in 2015, Earth’s population had added more than 700,000,000 individuals – a total of 7.2 billion people worldwide. It comes as no surprise that additional population demands additional food. Yet, the increasing prevalence of traditional agriculture in the world’s remaining arable land has also created some significant environmental challenges.

What if all it took to generate a high quality video was a series of photographs? What if that video could effectively predict the future based on the still shots? While it’s long been easy to break down an existing video into its component frames, the opposite has not been true. Extrapolating even short video based on individual frames is a processing challenge requiring AI to “fill in the blanks.”

Many places around the United States suffer from parking congestion. This can lead to a great deal of lost time and effort – drivers have to search lots and facilities for spaces, circling and circling, while enforcement officials spend time on minor breaches of conduct. Since the advent of the automobile, there’s been one fundamental problem: Parking spaces are first come, first serve. It’s impossible to predict when – or for how long – they’ll be needed.

Many medical conditions can leave people with a very restricted range of movement. Some conditions are so severe that sufferers may not be able to produce the motion required by standard wheelchairs. The question of how to best restore independence in such situations has long vexed medical professionals – but now, new help is on the way in the form of machine vision systems.